


Random Acts

by Thanfiction



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Actors, Gen, Meta, Random Acts Of Kindness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 21:40:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thanfiction/pseuds/Thanfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meta: Defending Misha's non-profit and the importance of the difference between kindness and charity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Random Acts

Shelters are absolutely worthy causes, and I have donated time, goods, and money to them in the past and will continue to do so.  I’ve also given extensively - including literally blood - to the Red Cross, and to numerous other organizations.  There are many, many groups doing tremendous good, and to give one’s resources to one does not necessarily demean any other.  

That said, I don’t appreciate you demeaning the mission of Random Acts, and I would like to offer you a little perspective from someone who has been about as poor as it’s possible to be in a developed country.  I have been on the streets, I have been in shelters, I have survived off charity, off friends, lived in my car and dropped down to 103lbs (with edema!) because I was getting by on $60 a week which included gas and cigarettes and left me about a dollar a day for food (and don’t say I could have quit…where I was emotionally, that extra strain would have meant suicide.).

When you are in that kind of Bad Place, there are options in the US, but many of them are incredibly demeaning to your personhood and dignity, often to the point that it seems better to suffer.  The US does have a national religion, and it’s Mammonism; the worship of money.  If you are poor, you are less than human, you are defective, you are morally disgusting, and you are not allowed to forget this.  You are to take whatever is given to you - even if that’s stuff from the food bank that is empty, disgusting, preservative-laden, half-spoiled creamofpowderofinstantcheeseflavored calories you can’t even prepare because you don’t have access to a stove.  You are to accept any hours at any job with any wages with any treatment under any conditions and be grateful and please sir can I have another. You must dress poor, act poor, look poor or else you’re uppity and a faker, but if you do, you’re trash who deserves your lot in life.  And God help you if mental or physical illness is involved, you have an addiction, or if you’re a PoC, a single mother, or are (or even are read as) queer.  

It compounds the poverty.  Eats your will and spirit by inches and papercut slices.  You’re already trying to climb out a pit with vertical walls of greased broken class shards…and the dehumanization, the shaming, the blaming, the accusations, and the humiliation games and rituals add a little extra touch of people standing above you laughing and occasionally pissing in your face and demanding you thank them for the water.  

You are told that you are lucky others find themselves obligated to assure you your needs, but you barely deserve those…ok, you really don’t, but they’ll give them to you anyway if you clear the hoops and are a “good poor.”  Food, water, shelter, basic clothing, maybe electricity and a phone and the most absolutely basic medical care if you’re lucky.  But you must accept your penance and live as a complete ascetic.  

One of the most debasing, degrading, loathing looks I have ever received from another human being was from a woman in Starbucks.  About a half hour previously, she had been in line behind me at Walmart and seen me buy my (very sensible) groceries with food stamps.  Now I was buying a small hot chocolate, using the last 80 cents off my gold card that had been put there by a friend for my birthday and paying the rest in small change I had been carefully hoarding.  And when I asked for a shot of espresso in it and dug out three more quarters, you’d have thought I raped a kitten on the counter.  Those were _luxuries_.  How  _dare_  I.  I’m a  _POOR_.  

More than anything, all humans need to feel like they are, in fact, human.  Like they matter.  Like they are loved.  Like they deserve to be seen with the same compassion as anyone who might happen to be better off.  

When I was in the position of someone who  _was_ getting help from shelters, a random flower would have been a huge deal to me.  More, even, than another prison-style Personal Care Box with my trial-size toiletries and my one size fits all cheap stretch underwear and my pamphlet on Jesus with helpful Bible verses.  It would have said “you’re not a bad person,”  ”you deserve nice things and pretty things and frivolous things and beauty just because.”  It would have said “I see you.  I don’t look past you.  I don’t require proof of income to decide whether you get one.  You get one because you’re here and a person…not even because you’re a poor person and I pity you.  Just because you’re a person.  Just like the person behind you who payed for  _their_  groceries with a platinum card.”  

I would have kept that flower, dried it, pressed it and wrapped it in paper and tucked it deep into my stash of special things.  It would have been a reminder that even for a fleeting moment, I mattered to someone.  And when you know that someone sees you as worth it, you can fight so much harder and so much longer and sometimes even win.  

Misha knows that.  He’s been there too.  He’s been a Poor. He’s received charity and he’s received kindness and he knows the difference, and he knows that when you’re told you may begrudgingly receive needs as a sign of someone else’s goodness, being freely and joyfully given luxuries is a profound validation of the human soul that cannot carry a price or a tax deduction or even words.

It’s why when I get free drinks on my Starbucks loyalty card, I ask homeless people to name the fanciest drink they can think of and get it for them.  It’s why, when my friend was in such a broken place inside that she couldn’t even see the hole she was in because she’d forgotten anything else, I didn’t pay her bills, I sent her on her dream vacation.  It’s why I participate in programs where artists leave little sketches and paintings in places like public bathrooms for people to find and take.  It’s something I try to never, ever lose sight of and if I ever find myself as financially lucky as Misha, it’s something in which I want to emulate him.  

Because it’s not about the acts.  

It’s about the compassion.


End file.
